About this Book

The Stonewall Riots and the Movement for LGBTQ Equality

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn was raided by the New York City Police Department, ostensibly for operating without a liquor license. This was a flimsy pretense, however, since the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) refused to grant liquor licenses to any bar that served homosexual customers, and the police department routinely used this discriminatory practice as a reason to arrest LGBT patrons. Shortly before this raid, in fact, numerous bars in Greenwich Village that served the LBGT community had been raided. And since the mafia had stepped into the void left by the SLA's refusal to grant licenses, gay bars frequently acted as fronts for the mob's other activities, which was another driving force for this raid, as chronicled in Tristan Poehlmann's The Stonewall Riots: The Fight for LGBT Rights.

But on this night, the crowd didn't disperse quietly, hoping to avoid the publishing of their names in newspapers for being arrested at a gay bar. ...